The Student-Led Music Group that Led Zeppelin Loves

Music teacher Diane Downs had no idea her music class students would end up performing for Ozzy Osbourne, or that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin would praise their cover of “Kashmir” on Facebook, saying “it’s too good not to share.”

But the Louisville Leopard Percussionists, a music group made up of second- to 12th-graders began in humbler circumstances at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1993, Downs was searching a school closet for bulletin board paper but found a closetful of instruments instead. So, she asked her students if they wanted to do a concert.

“You know, being second- and third-graders, they’re fearless,” she said. “So they were just, ‘Let’s do this!”

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First, they played at a PTA meeting and then at a nursing home. Ms Downs said the invitations to perform kept coming, leading them to play all over Louisville, and then across the country.

In 2003, the group became a non-profit organization, offering the Leopard experience to more kids beyond King Elementary. Three years later, HBO documented the group’s journey to New York City to open for the Chick Corea Trio in the film The Leopards Take Manhattan.

But what really skyrocketed the Leopards to stardom was when a YouTube video of them playing Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train went viral.

“Out of the blue, we got a check from Ozzy Osbourne to help support our group,” Downs said.

A couple years later, they were invited to appear on the reality show Ozzy and Jack’s World Detour.

“Some of the kids didn’t know who he was, so we had to do a little education, and they know who he is now,” she added.

The group’s cover of Led Zeppelin later also went viral on YouTube. Downs said the views went from 6,000 to 6 million views in a week. The students did interviews with media outlets all over the world.

While the students don’t really understand the impact that the group had in their lives when they were younger, Downs said, “I have had alumni come back to me and just say, ‘I can’t believe I did that when I was a kid… I can’t believe that happened to me.”